Countdown
by SleepytimeTea
Summary: How Gin met Aya, how Haru met Aya, and how it led to the Tokyo lockdown. A backstory to what happened before it all. This story will be as loyal as it can be to what is canon, so Gin will end up with Aya (hence the romance genre).


**Shin Megami Ibunroku Devil Survivor belongs to Atlus. Enjoy. **

* * *

"What's that? Say that one more time, you shithead."

"Hahahaha, let'm have it." The beaten man looked back at his assailants scornfully from his place on the ground, his suit smudged with dirt and debris from the alley. The night sky and the alley corner where he had been thrown made it impossible to see the faces of his attackers. He closed his eyes, trying to remember. It all happened so quickly, he didn't know where to try and figure out what happened.

Just a few hours ago, as he was walking to his office from the train, he had seen a group of four young men beating up a high school boy, and so he had stopped it by pretending to call the police. A few minutes later, when he had resumed walking, he heard voices behind him, cackling, laughing

"You didn't call the cops, did you, old man?" and then-_Smack._ A fist made contact with his jaw. "Are you listening to me, aAh?" He turned his focus to the present as he glared blearily through his tears at the same group of men, whose faces were masked by the darkness.

"…you're….nothing more than a…bunch of…hoodlums…The world…has no need…for people….like you….Graagh!" The salary man wheezed out, only to be kicked in his stomach. One of the men laughed.

"Hahahahaha. Did you hear that, Junya? This one's trying to preach!" One of them reached out swiftly with his hand to hold the salary man's head up by his hair so that they were face to face.

"Oh yeah? Well, why am I here right now, beating your sorry ass up, if the world has no need for me, huh?" The salary man was hurled onto the concrete once more. The man drove his heel into the other man's gut once more, slamming it down with force with every word "Huh?_-Slam-_Huh?-_Slam-__HUH? Just try and answer me!" _The man yelled out, his face contorted with derision. The salary man whimpered with every kick, but after the last one, he did not respond. An ominous silence lingered in the air.

"Oi…Is he dead?" One of them asked, a slight tremor in his voice that hinted at his fear through his shocked smile. One man, who had remained in the back, watching the sequence play out, stepped forward and examined the man.

"Hey….is he?" A murmur went through the remaining three. The one who kicked him, Junya started to protest, panicked.

"h-Hey! Don't look at me! I didn't – I didn't –" The man who was examining their prey got up. They all looked to him for his jurisdiction. He looked at them, a smile curling on his lips.

"What're you all worried about? He's alive. Calm your asses down." They all sighed a breath of relief. Junya laughed breathily and patted the man's shoulder, then gave one more kick in the direction of their prey.

"God, scaring us like that…"

"Eh, we had our fun. Let's go, you guys."

"Yeah…" They all headed out to the street, leaving behind the salary man in the corner of the alleyway. The young man who had examined the man followed suit, straightening up and grimacing as his head dipped out of the shadows and streetlight hit his eyes.

The light revealed a young, rather handsome man. His hair stuck to his face due to the beads of sweat on his forehead, but combined with his frowning face and messy clothes it clashed to make a stylish combination.

"Hey! Let's go downtown!" Junya looked back and saw the young man lagging.

"Yo, Yoshii, Koro. We have to wait for the man of the night, don't we?" He said, flourishing his arms dramatically. The other two turned back, waiting.

"Hahahaha, sorry sorry."

"Of course!" Junya walked towards the young man and slung his arm over the young man's shoulder, winking

"I mean, you were the one who ID'd that guy for us, Gin. Good memory." Gin glanced at the salary man, bloody and bruised.

"…Nah, just a good knack for faces."

* * *

Gin walked out of his apartment, yawning. He had stayed out unnecessarily late last night with Junya and the others, drinking, and had therefore awoken to a slight headache, but otherwise was all right. He had always been able to hold his liquor. He yawned once more as he flipped open his cell. There were 2 text message waiting for him. He looked at the subject and the sender.

* * *

To: GIN

From: Mother

Sub: Where are you?

* * *

Gin narrowed his eyes, deftly hitting the DELETE button. He scrolled down to the second message.

* * *

To: GIN

From: Nami

Sub: Come out and play

Just dumped bastard of a boyfriend. Come drinking with me + friends? 7 usual place.

* * *

Gin smiled slightly. Nami always had a good sense of humor, and her company wouldn't be too bad. He replied a hasty message, and stared at the screen as it sent the message. Gin looked glumly at the bright, sunny sun, and back at the screen of his cell. The letters 3:00 flashed on the screen. He grimaced What was he to do until 7? He looked about, at the usual streets, trees, and the like. He spat on the ground. There was nothing to do. It was all so boring, so meaningless, an endless stretch of nothing. He spat again. He sat down on a patch of grass, watching his surroundings.

As it was 3:00, kids from the nearby elementary school were walking down the sidewalks to come home from school, their ransel bags in red and black, chattering as they walked together or with parents. The parents, upon seeing Gin, would steer their children to the other side of the street; the older kids did the same. Gin smirked. School, what a waste of time. A place were kids were taught useless things. As someone once said, you go to kindergarten to go to grade school. You go to grade school to go to high school. You go to high school to go to college. You go to college to get a job. You get a job, then… do that until you died. Gin was pretty sure there was a clever ending for that quote, but he'd forgotten, so whatever.

It was all a set system, trying to keep the weak-minded enslaved. A system that didn't even work. Gin sighed, puffing out a string of smoke from his lips to evaporate into air, watching a particular youngster playing around with a paper airplane. He remembered a time when his eyes sparkled like that, a quixotic fool who believed everything was possible. It was all stupid. When he had been little, adults had asked him what he had wanted to be. His hag of a mother had always proudly recounted that in kindergarten he had answered that question with "I want to be a lawyer" in the midst of all the kids answering "I want to be a strawberry" and the like. She had repeated that incident to him ever since, an incident he didn't even remember, an incident when he was too naïve to even understand what it all meant. He felt irritated as he remembered that it all, and chucked his cigar onto the grass, wherein forth his irritation multiplied as he had to use a new cigar. He checked his cell once more. 3:04. He spat on the pavement once more, then headed out to buy soda to get the acrid taste of anger building up at his throat.

* * *

"Oh, hey, Gin. You're early." The girl Gin knew as Nami waved as she walked over with her gaggle of friends to their usual spot, the fountain. Gin knew Nami from high school; she was an older girl who wasn't too uptight about things, so he got along with her. In high school he had frequently snuck out of school with her and a couple friends.

"Yeah." Gin replied, a smile on his face. One of the girls following Nami poked her, squealing in a badly concealed whisper of "Hey, introduce us!" Nami, at this, smiled.

"Right, this here's my friend Gin. Be careful though, girls," She said, winking. "He wasn't nicknamed after the alcohol for nothing." The girls all giggled and oohed at this statement.

"Gin? Oh, I see! Ahahahaha!"

"Wait, wait. What does that mean?"

"It means," Gin said, his smile stretching cockily across his face. "That it would take a lot of alcohol to lay me out." Nami jabbed a thumb in his direction.

"He's one of the guys who can hold their liquor really well. So, that means that he'll be the one to remember all of your embarrassing outbursts when you're drunk."

"I haven't been able to see any embarrassing outbursts out of you, Nami." Gin chimed in, teasing.

"Well, of course. I can pretty damn well hold down my liquor." She said, challengingly. "Unless you want to challenge me to play a drinking game?" Gin laughed a bit.

"Oh, I don't know." He surveyed the three girls who followed Nami, and bowed. "Are you up for the challenge as well, ladies?" The reaction was instantaneous.

"Oh, how cocky!"

"Nami, I'm in!" Nami cocked her eyebrow.

"Geez, Gin, I _was_ joking. Take the hint, will you?" She said, chuckling. "But since these girls want to, there's no sense in not doing it." Her cohort cheered excitedly.

"Yay!"

"I've never played a drinking game before!" Nami laughed exasperatedly.

"Just know anything ridiculous you do will be posted on Facebook." At this, all of them gave a hearty chuckle.

* * *

Gin looked at his cell to see the time. The screen blared an unhelpful 10:00. He closed his eyes and leaned back, shutting his vision down to a comforting darkness. Only three hours. He'd only managed to use up three hours of his life. What was he going to do when he got to his apartment? He'd sleep for a good while, but when he woke up, then what? There wasn't anything–

"Gin?" Nami's voice called, bemused. He opened his eyes. They had booked the karaoke room until 1:00 AM, but the girls Nami had brought with her were already asleep from the alcohol.

"Hmm?" He replied. Nami stared back at him as she sipped from her cup.

"Nothing, I thought you had fallen asleep too." She paused. "I was going to take a picture." Gin wearily smiled.

"It'd take a lot more than that to get me to fall asleep." He said. "Do you want to see?"

"No thanks," Nami said, laughing slightly. "I've seen it before. Besides, I won't be able to imagine the bill."

"Oh, yeah." Gin said, remembering the bill. "If only there wasn't a bill." Silence lingered after his words, and it made Gin wish that he hadn't said something so glum. The whole purpose of drinking was to waste time, to forget reality, and what was he doing, bringing it up?

"Are you still hanging out with Junya and the rest of them?" Nami's question cut through his musings. Gin paused a bit, recounting the last night.

"Yeah," He replied. He needed to lighten the atmosphere; it was getting a bit serious. Say something sarcastic, something funny. "He's still the same hotheaded jerk he'd always been, though." Nami snickered. The tension that had built in Gin's throat dissipated.

"Yeah, I remember that. God, what's he doing with his life…" Nami muttered. Gin was a bit uneasy with this turn of the subject, but he went along with it and Nami recounted stuff she remembered Junya doing. Gin glanced at his cell again. Not enough. This conversation needed to go on longer. It was only 10:15, after all. Nami kept going, on and on, until she realized that Gin was tuning her out.

"Oh, sorry. I'd gotten carried away." Gin nodded understandingly. Nami used to date Junya, so it made sense. He was going to ask whether she still liked him when the subject was turned to him. "So what have you been doing?"

"Er, oh, me?" Gin was caught off guard. "Same as always." He wanted the subject off of him. Quickly. "How about you?" Nami shrugged.

"I guess the same for me as well. You know, working part-time at a family restaurant and a café to go to college next year isn't really the best thing to be doing, but hey, it's life."

"Yeah…" Gin said, pensively sipping beer from the can in his hand.

* * *

The conversation flickered and died later, and as the other girls Nami brought with her had stirred enough to start walking, the party ended at precisely 11:09. They all said goodbye to each other; Gin waved as the girls staggered to wait for their taxi, Nami bringing up the rear.

"Bye Gin. Take care of yourself now." Nami said, turning back as the girls hollered for the taxi. Gin frowned.

"What do you mean by that?" Nami smiled sheepishly.

"Nothing much. Oh yeah," Nami said, reaching into her bag. "There was this really nice bar I found a while back. It's a bit classy, but it's a good place. You should check it out." She handed him a paper matchbox with the address of the bar on it.

"Thanks." Gin replied, as Nami waved and got into the awaited taxi.

Gin lit a cigar with a match from the matchbox and looked at the letters on it. Nami was right, it did look classy; the letters were not simply inked on, but embossed on in a dark, red color, twirling to form the word [age], with the address curling beneath it. Gin stared at it for a bit, then put it in his pocket.

He breathed out, slowly, allowing the smoke to linger out. Only four hours and nine minutes. He could wander around the shopping district of Shinjuku until he came up with something to do, but it was highly likely he'd see former classmates, people, and the like. His was a well-known face, after all. Not that there was anything wrong with seeing them, but they were all so dull, so stupid, annoying, and he wasn't in the mood to amuse himself with their stupidity. Junya was just one of the many classic examples. Most of his classmates (that he knew, anyway), had made stupid choices and so didn't have work. They were just useless people, wandering around drinking aimlessly, mindlessly.

He was bored, bored, so bored, and there was nothing to do. Gin felt the snarl of irritation threatening to rip out of his throat again. He wanted to yell, scream, destroy something. Anything. Was there anything to do in this godforsaken earth? Gin thought of beating up the next person he met, but thought better of it. What would it do? What would it accomplish? Nothing. It was stupid, all stupid, so stupid. Instead, he went to the nearest convenience store and bought a 6-pack of beer, drinking that on his bedroom floor until he was too tired to drink, too tired to taste the bitterness of the beer, too tired to feel any ecstasy or happiness from it all. As he was falling into a dream and going between dreams, he wished he would remain there, as childish and stupid as that very wish was.

* * *

When Gin woke up, it was 5:00 PM, and he was soaked in sweat. He remembered waking up, little by little, floating in and out of sleep and reality, and even then it wasn't enough. He was tired; he didn't want to do anything, yet a sense of annoyance; that there should be something _fun _to do, nagged him like a mosquito bite. The inside of his mouth felt terrible, and he felt disgusting. Finally, after cursing his life multiple times and trying to ignore his increasing discomfort, at 5:32, give or take a few seconds, he crawled off the floor and took a shower. After the shower, he felt a bit better, but the same irritation came back when he saw the state of his room.

"Shit…" He cursed his life yet again in his mind. He had never been much of a cleaner to begin with, but it was a mess, with the cans of beer he'd drunk strewn over the tatami floor. The thought of cleaning came into his mind, but why? There should be other, more _fun_ things to do, besides cleaning. And why'd he have to clean anyways? His irritation increased as he thought further, his thoughts leading him into anger and frustration. He shouldn't have to clean. Someone else should do it instead. It wasn't his fault that his life was boring; he should have a life that was bursting with life and happiness. With excitement, and joy. Another thought came into his mind, an old phrase. Or maybe not so. Name had said it, the night before, although not at him._What are you doing with your life?_ It was a phrase his mother shouted at him for some time before he'd left the house, a constant reminder of how he wasn't good enough. One occasion was at a time like this, when he had drunk himself to sleep at a night when she was out. _What are you doing with your life?_ She'd screamed, her lecture of how she believed in him, that he should have something he wanted to do, that as her son, he shouldn't be like this, starting once again. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up. It wasn't his fault. If his life wasn't so boring, he wouldn't be like this. He was tired of all of this crap and nonsense. None of it was his fault.

Gin pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration, closed his eyes, and sighed, ignoring the sight in front of him. His throat burned in anger. He tried to think of better things. He remembered that once, a while back, he'd had a girlfriend, and she would come by and clean for him. Maybe he needed a girlfriend. One that wasn't whiny or annoying, one that would be able to gauge when to leave him alone, one that wouldn't boss him around (that was why he'd left that one, he remembered). Yeah, a girlfriend, who wasn't too serious about the whole thing, was good at cooking and stuff, gorgeous to look at and be seen with, and was _understanding_. God, he needed a girlfriend like that. It was just another facet of his life that he was intrinsically missing, a part that he wished would just pop up. He looked in the mirror of the bathroom as he brushed his teeth. He was a good-looking guy. He really was. Girls like that should line up for him, be desperate for his attention, clamour for his eyes to look upon them and size them up. He spat out the toothpaste. But of course, if they were there, he wouldn't have a life like this. He shaved, contemplating what to do, and as he threw the pants he wore the night before into the washing machine full of dirty clothes, a matchbox slipped out. He bent down to pick it up, reading the name of the bar [age] embossed in fancy lettering, noticing the classiness of it all and admiring it, just as he had done the night before. It opened from 5 PM to 2 AM. He checked the clock. 6:34 PM.

It was perfect. Maybe his life would be fun, even if it was just for a while.

* * *

**Just a head's up; this will be updated irregularly, but the chapters will be long.**


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